Yesterday I bought Wallace and Grommit's "Three Amazing Adventures" to show my class in the afternoon following day one of the the stressful state-wide math test. I watched one of the episodes with my wife, who said, "There is no way your kids are going to like this."
This morning the kids were, as predicted, well stressed. The teachers were doing their best to calm them down and simultaneously energize them for the test they were about to take, which could determine whether or not they spend the summer in school.
In my experience you see the kids at their best behavior during the test. One thing new york kids know, and respect, is high-stakes testing. It is one of the consistent features of their school lives. Teachers change, schools change, for some kids even families change, but you can always count on a big, important test with big manila (or "vanilla" if you're twelve) envelopes and very serious looking strangers telling your teacher to keep his door unlocked.
After the test is another story. The spring that is wound all year, then tightened to the breaking point all morning, is released. The kids spend the afternoon following the test bouncing off the walls. I hoped that watching "Wallace and Grommit" would have some kind of mystical druid effect on the class. Unfortunately I am not, as I pretend to be, the master of my destiny.
That job belongs to the Assistant Principal, who informed me, in the middle of period four, that all sixth graders would be going to the auditorium to watch a movie. For four straight periods. I didn't ask what three hour epic he'd be showing. Andre Rublev, perhaps? The Sorrow and Pity? Maybe we were dividing parts I and II of Werckmeister Harmonies between the two days of the test. I asked if I could get my class, just for fifth period. He said, "Sure do whatever you want."
And then the bell rang. I waited by my door. Saw not a child. I waited. Still no one. I walked to the end of the hallway and observed that the entire sixth grade was being herded into the auditorium, straight from the lunchroom. So all those kids who sat together at lunch, ran around for fifteen twenty minutes in the yard, now were being led into a half-dark room to sit in stiff wooden chairs, still in their noisy cliques, and were expected to be calm and quiet and watch Harry Potter.
Unlikely.
The classes were all mixed up, it was impossible for me to extract my group of kids from the rabble. I decided to do what they say all good teacher do and "be flexible."
By the end of period five, about a quarter of the way into the boy-wizard movie, the mass of tweens were still loud and unruly. The seems ambivalent about Harry's travails are more interested in giving each other the finger and tugging on their classmates' braids.
I left. It was my prep and I had a coverage, my second for the day, seventh period. I passed one of my students in the hallway.
"What are you doing out here?" I asked.
"I can't watch that movie. I can't read it either," She explained. "I can't see wizardry. It's in the bible."
I went out to the yard, where the eighth grade students were being held. Loosely held, that is. Half the grade was shivering in the shade of the building ("Mister, why can't we get our coats?" "Why don't you stand in the sun?") and the other half was chasing each other back and forth in a lose-lose game of tag. A fight broke out, which was soon broken up. The school's security guards came out from the building to drag one of the kids back inside. He was convulsing and fighting the whole way up the stairs. Kids were lines up against the iron fence surrounding the yard watching the kid resist the two female guards. Twice they had to stop and change their grip on the kid; he almost got free. Finally he was gone behind the back door of the school, the game of tag resumed.
Back inside the sixth graders were getting restless. The wizardry of young Potter didn't interest them. Two classes were chuffed that they were missing their gym periods (the seventh grade had claimed the gym). A few teachers had had enough and pulled their classes out- "Back to the rooms!" Which inspired all the grade to rise and rush out into the hallway.
The classes who were supposed to be in the gym roamed the hallways in search of a teacher, hoping not to find one. I searched for the Assistant Principal, architect of this plan, but couldn't find him. Finally I found the principal, who told me to find the gym teacher (easy) and tell him to cover the remaining sixth graders in the auditorium.
Which I did. But one problem. Harry Potter had ended. Restlessness and chaos was imminent. Until I remembered- Wallace and Grommit.
It was the calmest, most pleasant fifteen minutes of the day.
* * *
Living in the Eternal Present
One of my students asked me, "Mister where are you from?"
"Long Island."
"Huh?"
"New York."
"Oh. Where you parents from?"
"New York."
"You jewish?"
"No."
"Me neither, I'm Puerto Rican."
"You know that jewish is a religion and Puerto Rican is a nationality, right."
Blank stare.
"You could be a jewish Puerto Rican."
"No, no. I don't know nobody like that."
"Mister," Another asked me. "You ever been to the D.R.?"
"No I haven't."
"Why not? You don't like it?"
"No, I just haven't gone there. I've been to England, though."
"So you English?"
"No I told you already I'm from Long Island."
"Que?"
"I'm from New York."
"So why you go to England?"
"I like it there. I've been there twice."
"So you from there."
"No. I'm from here," I said. "Hey, just watch Wallace and Grommit."
Very funny
Posted by: Hamida | March 15, 2006 at 01:13 PM